MORE info on my diorama?

From the start of my diorama, I had been thinking of stories for the people in it. However, it wasn't until recently I realized how I could do that. I typed up all my little bios, put them into text boxes on MS Word, and printed that. So here it is:

These two are in separate squads, but act as if they were in the same section; they think a lot alike, and have been through many battles together. The machine gunner occasionally acts as a spotter for the antitank rifleman. Both know they are better off together, with the machine gunner pinning down any infantry, allowing the antitank rifleman to get off accurate shots. Using this tactic, they made it through Kharkov, Rostov, and the 1^st battle of Kiev. They are currently split; the antitank rifleman wants to use the log for cover, but the machine gunner is concerned about what happened to the previous gunner who took cover there.

(The cover this references is a log with a DP machinegun and a helmet behind it.)

This man is a veteran, who fought during Kharkov, Moscow, and Stalingrad, and was recently pulled from the city fighting to take part in the pincer movement around Paulus’ Sixth Army. It is thought that he was mentally scarred from what he saw in Kharkov, and never wanted to fight in a city ever again, so a while after he arrived at Stalingrad, complaining endlessly to his CO, his CO had mercy and sent him off to the 24^th Army. He is now enjoying his ride; he grew up in a small town, and had never before rode on any vehicle, and ignoring his CO’s directions to dismount.

The two men behind the turret are friends who enlisted together, and during training, the man shooting distinguished himself as a good shot. He, however, worked best with his friend aiding him, so their COs decided to let them stay as a team throughout any reorganization. They fought in several small battles, until they joined a motor rifles unit in Kursk, where they met a tank crew, who were added to the list of units to stay together. That tank crew is the one featured in this diorama.

The two Soviet officers shown have very different stories. The one pointing and shouting is a veteran of Moscow, Kharkov, and Stalingrad, and served alongside the other man in this scene who did. He thus has great pity for him, and decided to let him rest on the tank. However, the officer running is a rookie, promoted to fill a spot, not for his skills. He is known throughout his platoon as an enthusiastic, courageous man, great at leading a charge into combat, but not so well at telling his men what to do, or showing any sort of discipline over his men.

Officially, the weapons-distribution in this squad is determined by rank. However, the men in this squad decided to redistribute their weapons to whoever seemed most fit for it. The man standing while hip-shooting the MG-42 is the strongest, so any other weapon on him was a waste. The man in the middle of throwing a grenade is the best thrower, but because he couldn’t carry enough grenades, the rest of the men are carrying some for him. The man shooting his StG-44 is a renowned shot; given perfectly equal weapons, he would be a perfect match for the sharpshooter on the Russian side. The man with the Panzerfaust is the fastest man on the team, and they gave him the Panzerfaust thinking that it would be easier for him to get close enough to the target. The man wearing the cap is the CO, and prefers to keep his issued weapon.

The "guy with the Panzerfaust" is outside the edge of the photo, but he does exist, and is running across the stream, unknowingly crossing the PaK-40's line of fire.

Having just woken up, the loader forgot that he had loaded a round into the gun the night before. The Commander is attempting to tell him this, but is having trouble talking over the T-34. So, you can see him multitasking: he is both trying to find the T-34 and push the loaders shell away.



Kharkov was a city in Western Russia, taken by the Germans. However, during the fight, the Germans got a bit overboard in trying to demoralize the Russians, involving a lot of dead Russian officers being mutilated, burned, and/or hung, and their bodies placed in places for all Russian forces to see. Needless to say, Russian morale was low.

Kursk was a battle involving many, many, Russian tanks fighting many, many, German Panzers. The Russians won, marking the first major German defeat.